There almost isn’t enough praise in the world
Sunday saw another amazing week of speedrunning come to an end, as the curtain fell on Summer Games Done Quick 2019. For seven days, players from all over the world descended on the DoubleTree Hilton Bloomington-Minneapolis Hotel in Minnesota to burn their way through a catalogue of amazing video games and Last Action Hero, while viewers generously offered up donations for a worthy cause.
When the closing credits rolled on the last game of the week – beloved SNES RPG Chrono Trigger – everybody watching at home and in attendance was gobsmacked by an incredible final total of $3,004,039, smashing last year’s total by almost a million dollars. The money raised will be going toward international organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres, a network of medical aid professionals who provide relief, medicine and care wherever it is needed worldwide, regardless of race, creed or political persuasion.
The GDQ team has bookmarked every single one of last week’s runs on Twitch, and are currently uploading each playthrough to their official YouTube channel. You can find a full list of games, as well as handy links, over at this Reddit page. From classics such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, TMNT: Turtles in Time, Silent Hill 3 and Gauntlet, to modern releases like Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect and the Resident Evil II remake, there is more than enough video here to while away the lazy hours.
There almost aren’t the words to congratulate the team on their incredible success. Well done to everyone involved at SGDQ 2019, be they runner, show host, crew member, or even the thousands of generous donors. I sound like a broken record, but video games have forever been the scapegoat of the media, pilloried as a waste of time at best and dangerous at worst. But we’ve always known different, and events such as GDQ prove the amazing power, passion, generosity and caring nature of so much of our community, coming together to achieve such awe-inspiring success.
Awesome Games Done Quick will take place in Orlando, Florida in January 2020. Start practicing.